Revelations
by bioticsandheadshots
Summary: Friendly bonding over battlefield prowess between Ashley and Garrus leads to a surprising epiphany.


**Author's Note:** This one shot takes place in the same universe as my long fic, Voiceless Whispers, though it's not necessary to have read that to enjoy this.

* * *

"C'mon, Vakarian. You're not scared, are you?" Ashley grinned at the former C-Sec officer as she slid the VR headset over her bun.

Garrus copied her movements with his own set. "Of course not. I believe our current score is two to one, in favor of me."

Her fingers paused over the controls. "Which one this time?"

Pinnacle Station, a special operations training station employed by the Alliance as well as the Council, had gladly parted with some of their tech by request of Captain Anderson. He and the station's CO, Admiral Ahern, knew each other from the First Contact War. There had been no time to spare for Shepard's team to go to the station and undergo training as a unit so Anderson had called in a favor with Ahern and convinced the man to send over less advanced, but similar, VR training simulations that could be done while the Normandy was in transit.

There were a number of different simulations they could run, including hunting down and killing as many enemies as possible in an allotted time or capturing various tactical objectives as fast as possible.

"Let's do a hunt," Garrus said without hesitation.

Ashley huffed, but keyed in his choice. Garrus was nearly as good with the sniper rifle as Shepard. The last time they'd run through a hunt, he'd set up a blind on top of a freight container and sniped with leisure while she rushed around, taking out as many as she could with her assault rifle. A sly grin spread across her face when the location selection popped up. The volcanic location was what had given Garrus the open views he needed to take out the targets easily. This time, she selected the tropical location. There were more twists and turns in the layout, which would take his advantage away and put them more on equal footing.

"Alright, ready?" Ashley glanced over at him and, when Garrus nodded, she activated the simulation.

When they popped in, his head swiveled slowly from side to side as he took in his surroundings. A smirk crept over her face at the twitch of his mandibles. Refusing to rise to her bait, he wordlessly swapped out his favored sniper rifle for the assault rifle strapped to his back as the timer ticked down.

The loud blare of the siren announced the start of the match. The chittering clicks and hums of simulated geth filled the air and Ashley raced across wet sand, her rifle answering them. Water splashed up her legs as her feet pounded through the softly lapping waves at the beach's edge. More geth fell before her as she continued her momentous push further into the heart of the map.

The familiar whine of a missile jerked her eyes skyward. With a lunge towards the nearest cover, Ashley managed to duck behind a rocky outcropping just before the rocket exploded a few meters in front of her, sending a shower of sand in the air and shaking the ground around her. She pressed herself against the rough surface and peered around the corner. Two rocket troopers loomed in the path.

"Shit!" Ash had none of Garrus's tech expertise and no experience with overload to whittle away at their full shields. She pulled a grenade from the belt at her waist and tossed it around the corner. When the boom echoed in front of her, she spun around the makeshift barrier and followed up the blast with short bursts from her rifle.

The extra few seconds it took to rip through their shields before she could chip away at their actual platforms made Ashley reckless. As soon as the simulated geth dissolved into pixels, she rushed across the rising metal platform, not taking note of her surroundings. Three rocket drones rose in the sky above her, firing as they wove patterns in the air. A fuel tank to her left exploded, sending her flying through the air. She slammed into the sand, almost tasting the salty, gritty texture of it as her lungs expelled their air in a loud _ummph_ on impact. She forced herself to roll, ignoring the pain the simulator sent racing up her body, and fired at the drones until they exploded into a shower of pixelated debris.

She hauled herself to her feet and continued her onslaught across the beach. More pockets of geth popped from around corners and behind rocky protrusions in the sand but, lesson learned, she took her time getting through them. She'd never win if they managed to "kill" her before the timer went out.

As she reached a small cove crawling with geth, the timer began its cheerful _ding, ding_ as it counted down the remaining ten seconds of the match. Ashley activated overkill mode and sprayed a heavy stream of fire at the targets in front of her, grinning gleefully as they all collapsed before the match ended.

The air shimmered around them and the goggles deactivated, bringing them back to the Normandy's bridge.

"In your face, Vakarian!" Ashley's fist pumped the air as their kill numbers appeared on screen. _Williams: 48, Vakarian: 46_. She yanked the goggles from head, her bun tumbling messily around her shoulders as it caught on the strap. "Pay up!"

"Shhhhh!" Corporal Lowe turned to glare at Ashley from her seat across the bridge.

Ashley held up her hands in apology. "Sorry, sorry. We'll get out of your hair."

Goggles stashed back in their appropriate storage bins, Ashley and Garrus trudged back down to the cargo hold. They had the place nearly to themselves. Dubyansky, the requisitions officer, was off duty so his corner of the bay was empty. Other than the usual hum of the drive core, the only sound in the room was the loud rumbling coming from the corner where Wrex had stashed his cot.

With a resigned sigh, Garrus ran his nimble fingers over the keypad on his locker and popped the door open. Ashley crossed her arms and leaned against Kaidan's locker, unable to keep the grin from her face as she tapped her fingers against her bicep. Reaching into the small storage space, Garrus pulled out the hyper rail she'd been coveting ever since she'd seen he had one.

"You sure I can't convince you to take anything else?" He kept his talons wrapped tightly around the mod even as he extended his arm towards her.

Ashley's grin widened and she shook her head. "Nope. I won that fair and square."

The heavy weight of it dropped into her outstretched hands. Sure, she probably wouldn't have many uses for the rail upgrade since it produced massive amounts of heat and recoil. The hypervelocity slugs from this baby could do significant damage, even to an armored vehicle. It almost made her _want_ to go find some geth armatures to test it out on.

"Here. Take this too," Garrus said as she stashed the weapon mod in her own locker.

Ashley noted the dark bottles in his other hand. "Why Officer Vakarian! Drinking on the job, tsk, tsk. Whatever would Shepard think?"

" _The_ Commander Shepard? CO of this vessel and first human Spectre?" Garrus's mandibles flared with a grin. "She'd probably be pissed I only have the two. Besides, we're off duty."

"Touché." The two of them crossed the room and settled on the floor near Garrus's cot. He checked the labels of the beer, making sure to pass her the human beer while he kept the dextro one for himself. Ashley chuckled as the two clinked the necks of the bottles together. "Never thought I'd see the day I'd be friends with a turian."

"No?"

"No. In fact, when Shepard first picked you up, I not so subtly suggested barring your access to engineering and the CIC."

Garrus hummed in amusement. "I'm sure that went over well."

"Basically, no. Though I assured her it wasn't going to be a problem. Told her if she wanted me to kiss a turian, I'd ask which cheek."

Garrus cocked his head to one side and stared at her. "Kiss?"

"C'mon, Garrus," she said with a roll of her eyes. "Kiss. That thing where you purse your lips and press them up against someone else's?"

His taloned finger came up and pointed at his mouth plates. "Turians don't _have_ lips."

"Oh, right." Elbow propped on one knee, Ashley dropped her chin into her palm with a frown. "Oh, what the hell. Everyone deserves a kiss, at least once in their life," she finally said with a shrug. She leaned over quickly, meaning to give him a quick peck on the cheek, just like she'd told Shepard she would do. At the same time, he turned to her in confusion and her lips crashed against the front of his plates as their foreheads bumped together.

His face plates were rough and scraped against her lips, not unlike sandpaper, but also not entirely unpleasant. She froze for a moment, eyes wide as she stared into the cerulean blue of his— _reminder to tell him that you_ _'re supposed to_ close _your eyes when you kiss—_ before she scuttled away until she felt the Mako at her back.

"I have to admit, I don't quite see the appeal." Garrus finally said before bringing the bottle back to his mouth. His movements were nonchalant, if she ignored his dilated pupils.

Ashley felt a hot flush creep up her neck. "Well, that wasn't quite what I was going for. I was aiming for friendly kiss on the cheek."

Garrus laughed. "Deadly with a high powered assault rifle. Piss poor aim with the lips. Got it."

"Hey! There was definitely interference from your end," she said, smacking him on the arm as the awkward tension dissipated. Her laughter joined his, the sound filling the cargo bay enough that Wrex's snoring faltered. The two of them covered their mouths with their hands as they tried to hold back the laughter. _Never wake a sleeping krogan_ , Ashley thought, _especially one that sleeps with a shotgun_.

"For your information" she continued when they'd finally quieted enough that Wrex's snoring had resumed a normal pattern, "it can actually be _really_ nice, depending on who's doing the kissing."

"I'll have to take your word for it. I doubt Shepard will make a pit stop so I can learn the art of kissing," he added, his head turned slightly in her direction. She wondered if it was just her imagination or if the tone of his sub-vocals had dropped a little lower.

Her fingers made a mess of the label on her bottle as, suddenly, Ashley Williams found herself wondering what it would be like to _really_ kiss a turian.


End file.
